Posts Tagged ‘Blog Awards’

Posted on March 7, 2008 - by Justin Hartman

SA Blog Awards, WTF?

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I feel quite bad about doing this seeing as Mike just used me as an example in his SA Blog Awards post but I have some burning issues which need to aired.

Let me start by saying I think the SA Blog Awards has the potential to be a really good thing but every year, without fail, something goes wrong which undermines the integrity of this competition and to be fair I haven’t really cared about it until now.

After some delay the voting went live on Wednesday for the blogs that had been nominated by users and there are a couple of issues which need to be addressed.

Judges

Seriously, what’s up with this? The competition is nearly finished as we still don’t know who the judges will be. I’ve tried on a couple of occasions to find out what’s going on here but no one has a clue and there is little response from people who are seemingly involved in the process.

Categories

I was particularly upset to see that a lot of the categories that were up during the nomination phase have been removed. I realise that this was probably due to the lack of nominations but surely some explanation could have been provided?

Incorrect Placements

As an organiser I would assume there is a level of control over which sites get featured in which category but it seems that the SA Blog Awards is a free-for-all when it comes to this. For example how is it possible for Nudjit (a site which I started) to get accepted into the Technology category if the site was only launched a month ago? I thought this was the blog awards for 2007.

I also have an issue with Thought Leader being in the category Best SA Blog. Everyone I have spoken to agrees that Thought Leader is a platform (similar to Planet Blogs) but with a push it could be a group blog.

I haven’t spoken with either Vincent or Matt about their thoughts on this however this isn’t an issue with Thought Leader but rather an issue with the organising committee who allowed this to happen. You can twist this any which way you want to but Thought Leader isn’t a blog as much as Nudjit shouldn’t be in the blog awards this year.

Communication

While these issues above aren’t the be-all and end-all of things I do have a very serious problem with the communication. I personally have no idea who runs the competition (I know Jon Cherry is involved) but right from the start communication by the organisers has been appalling. I really would have liked to see what the motivation was for removing categories, why no one has bothered to explain why there are no judges for the competition and overall what the status was/is on the competition (i.e. delays, processes, etc.).

The SA Blog Awards is a farce and provides absolutely no value or true reflection of the state of blogging in South Africa.

Mike was very opinionated about people moaning and not doing anything about this so in the spirit of his post I’m going to offer my assistance for the next blog awards. I’m not sure if the organisers will want me after this post but at worst I can assist them with the communication aspect which is the biggest flaw in my opinion.